Sixty minutes. That’s how long it took for a private Snapchat message to travel from Kristen Volpe’s phone to the FBI to the deputies standing in her elementary school hallway. On January 29, 2025, the 22-year-old student teacher at John L. Hensey Elementary in Washington, Illinois, vented to her boyfriend and two roommates — three people total — after a student closed her laptop mid-class and wiped her lesson plan. She referenced shooting the student or the school. She meant it as a frustrated joke. Snapchat’s algorithm didn’t get the humor.
No student reported her. No parent. No coworker. The flag was entirely automated. Snapchat’s policy permits voluntary emergency disclosures to law enforcement — no warrant required — when the platform determines imminent harm exists. The algorithm makes that initial call. Think of it like your Ring doorbell deciding to call 911 on its own, except the doorbell is reading your text messages.
I fully agree with how all of this is authoritarian bullshit but I can’t escape that nagging feeling that this too is about the US, the only country in the world where these shootings are daily occurrences; I get that people get ichy about even jokes like these
And yet, if the US cares so much how come it doesn’t take more comprehensive steps to prevent them?
It’s only ever invasions of privacy to feed directly to law enforcement. And they won’t even enter the building to confront active shooters.